The Horse, the Wheel, and Language

The Horse, the Wheel, and Language is a book by David Anthony. I do not remember how I came across this book but glad that I purchased it to read. Perhaps my interest in it was piqued by its promise of unveiling the history of Indo-European language speakers and tracing the source of migration of the peoples who spoke this language. And what were these people called? Aryans! Ahem.

How did the Indo-Eurpoean language tree came to light?

William Jones, an English jurist and philologist, was appointed a judge of the Supreme Court at Calcutta, the then British India’s highest court. To tackle the local judicial matters, he found that the knowledge of Sanskrit language was necessary as the locals would quote local laws in that language. And so he began studying Sanskrit. Upon completion of his Sanskrit studies, he made a very famous observation which some regard as what gave birth to the field of language classification. He quipped:

So what is the language tree which places at it’s source the Proto-Indo-European language from which Willian Jones suggested that Sanskrit, Latin and Greek were derived. The book gives us a language tree which classifies not only these 3 but a whole lot of other languages in the same family, such as Punjabi which is my native language. Here it is:

Sanskrit, one of the oldest languages of India (the other being Tamil) was what the people who called themselves Aryas (or Aryans) brought with them when they arrived in India. But at that time, when these similarities were discovered, the past and migration patterns of Aryans had not been studied and that led to a lot of speculation as to who these people were.

It’s effect on European outlook and how the Nazis became Aryans?

Once this shared parent language problem was framed (Proto-Indo-European), it caught the interest of Europeans who also started imagining the past along the lines of race theory and shared ancestors. Since the term used by authors of Vedas (ancient religious texts of India composed in Vedic Sanskrit), (as well as Zoroastrian religious texts) to denote themselves people was Aryan, Europeans borrowed this term and started calling themselves Aryans. Some of these Europeans even took one step further to announce that it was in fact Europe that was the source of Aryan migration!

Thoughts on the book.

I liked the book. Although it becomes just too detailed at times, such as giving us the count of the number of objects found at each burial site, I really like how it tracked the Aryan peoples migration patterns and gave us insight into their social life. So if you are language geek or a native speaker of one of the Indo-European languages, this book might interest you.